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€283 million contract for operating JET signed | 08/07/2014

A major new contract worth €283 million has been signed between the European Commission and Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, enabling CCFE to continue to operate JET – for use by the EUROfusion consortium of European fusion research laboratories – until the end of 2018.

CCFE has been operating JET, Europe's largest fusion energy experiment, for fusion scientists around the continent since 2000. But the new agreement represents the largest ever single contract to be awarded to CCFE and gives Culham and the European fusion programme unprecedented security of funding for five years. This enables future experimental programmes and further upgrades to JET to be planned with confidence and secures its position as a science and engineering test bed for its international successor ITER.

The new JET Operating Contract was months in preparation at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, but has now formally been signed. The first payments to CCFE have already been received.

CCFE Director Professor Steve Cowley was delighted with the agreement of the contract: “This is great news for the highly-skilled CCFE staff who work on JET and for the European fusion programme. We are determined to make the most of this investment and push JET towards ever-improving performance in the years to come.”